Template:Birth date and age

This template is used on 265,000+ pages.To avoid large-scale disruption and unnecessary server load, any changes should first be tested in this template's /sandbox or /testcases subpage, or in your own user space. The tested changes can then be added in one single edit to this template. Please consider discussing any changes on the talk page before implementing them.

Do not use this template when the person’s exact date of birth is disputed or unknown.

The {{Birth date}} and {{Birth date and age}} templates will return a person’s date of birth and optionally his/her age. They have the shortcuts {{dob}} and {{bda}}, respectively.

Using this template rather than simply inserting the date into articles allows for the inclusion of hidden metadata about the date. This metadata can be used by web browsers and other software tools to extract the details, and display them using some other website or mapping tool, index or search them.

{{dob|year of birth|month of birth|day of birth|additional parameters}}

To display a birth date with calculated age

{{Birth date and age|year of birth|month of birth|day of birth|additional parameters}}

This form is only intended for living persons. In the rare case that a living person's birth date is given in a non-Gregorian calendar this template should not be used. The parameter names 'year', 'month', and 'day' can be used instead of the first, second, and third parameters for 'Birth date and age' only. These parameter names are not available for the 'Birth date' template.

Month First (mf) and Day First (df) options

The df (day first) and mf (month first) parameters indicate the intended date format to display. The appropriate parameter should be set to "y" or "yes" e.g. df=yes or mf=y.

The default output of this template is to display the month before the day. This default may not be appropriate for articles about people from parts of the world where the day precedes the month in a date. In such articles the parameter, "df", should be set to display the day before the month.

The parameter "mf", while not actually used by the template, will indicate that month first format is intended. Using these parameters can assist bots or other automated processing to detect which date format is intended; leaving the format as default may lead an editor or bot to change the format to an unintended value.

Do not specify both "df" and "mf" parameters in the same use of the template, as these formats are mutually exclusive.

Notes

When only the year of a person's birth and/or death are known, or if it is desired not to state a person's full dates of birth and death for privacy reasons, use the templates {{Birth year and age}} and {{Death year and age}} instead.

Note: The template will appear broken when the parameters are left blank (as seen above).

Note: Do not use this template inside of the Persondata template, as it can interfere with data extraction.